Green groups see red on water bill

Green groups are trying to knock a massive water bill off the fast track in the Senate, outraged about so-called environmental streamlining provisions that they say would use punitive fines to pressure agencies into approving potentially damaging and wasteful projects.

Unfortunately for them, key architects of Congress’s first earmark-free stab at a Water Resources Development Act are pushing forward with language they say cuts red tape, speeds up reviews and expedites construction.

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Members of organizations like the Sierra Club, the National Wildlife Federation and the Natural Resources Defense Council say the bill instead represents a rollback of environmental law and a transfer of power to the Army Corps of Engineers, an agency long criticized for pursuing ecologically dubious projects. Those organizations, as well as a large coalition of environmental lawyers, are calling for the speed-up measures to be struck from the bill.

These calls have gained no traction in the Senate, however. Environment and Public Works Chairwoman Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) and ranking member David Vitter (R-La.) unanimously moved their bill through committee last month to the on-deck circle of the full Senate with the backing of Majority Leader Harry Reid.

Boxer says the attacks are misguided.

“We don’t change environmental law” with the acceleration provisions, Boxer said in an interview. “We just set deadlines and make people get to their day in court in a timely fashion. If the agencies drag and drag and drag and local governments start to lose money that they set aside, there has to be a penalty for that.”

Efficiency in spending and construction are major goals of pro-infrastructure Republicans and reflect an area of compromise with Democrats as Congress works to stretch money ever further. Boxer’s water bill follows the same template as her transportation compromise last year with Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.) and the House Republican leadership, with a focus on reform rather than higher or lower spending levels.

In fact, Boxer said, she would have written the water bill’s accelerating language even if she didn’t need GOP buy-in.

“I don’t have objection to what we do. Because I think that what we did, we stood our ground and did not give up one environmental law. Not one,” Boxer said, adding, “I feel bad that some of the groups I work closely with aren’t that happy about it.”

Her attitude is not popular among those worried that agencies like the Fish and Wildlife Service and the Environmental Protection Agency will become mainly concerned with avoiding fines.

Melissa Samet, senior water resources counsel for the National Wildlife Federation, said Boxer is “tarnishing her own record” with the legislation.

“This is not a good thing for the environment,” Samet said. “We do understand what it does and understand very clearly how it will play out on the ground.”

Samet said the bill would allow the Army Corps to gain power over environmental decisions in which it previously hasn’t had jurisdiction, leading to unnecessary construction because of the “pressure” coming from the corps onto reviewing agencies.

Under existing laws, EPA was able to take action in 2008 to halt the Yazoo Backwater Project, a corps flood-control effort in Mississippi that the environmental agency says would have caused “unacceptable” wetland destruction. Samet fears the new WRDA bill might make such an action impossible.